Horrockses-Inspired Rose Stripe Dress

Another finished dress in a new fabric from my new book! I've been making it my mission lately to sew as many of these new fabrics as possible and to use as many different combinations of patterns from Gertie's Ultimate Dress Book as I can think of. This fabric is the Rose Garden Stripe! It's a floral stripe on an ivory background and it's 100 percent cotton Dotted Swiss.

This fabric was directly inspired by vintage Horrockses dresses. Horrockses was a British brand that made the most lovely day dresses of the '40s and '50s. They were especially known for their house-designed prints and one of their trademarks was the floral stripe.

For my dress, I knew I wanted to do a chevron design on the front bodice. I used the basic v-neck bodice from Gertie's Ultimate Dress Book but added a center front seam, rather than cutting on the fold. I'll admit that I enlisted my mom to cut it for me (she kept offering to cut things! You would have done the same!). She did a bang-up job.

The pattern has both waist and bust darts, so here's what it looks like when sewn up:

I decided to keep the back on the straight grain, and have the strips running horizontally.

I used the basic short sleeve pattern.

The bodice and skirt are lined. The bodice is lined to the edges (there are instructions for how to do this in the book) and the sleeves are left unlined. The armholes are serged together for a clean finish. The lining fabric is a bright white cotton, which keeps the outer fabric looking bright as well.

For the skirt, I free-styled it a bit and did a sort of faux cartridge-pleating with rows of machine gathering. I love this look on dirndls; however it's usually hand-gathered and requires a lot more fabric than I wanted to use. So I decided to try the machine gathering, and I really like it!



To make the skirt, I cut a rectangle that is 3 times the width of the waistline measurement. I cut the same thing for the lining. I made the two pieces into tubes, leaving open about 7" at center back for the zipper opening. Then I basted the two pieces together and made about six rows of gathering stitches, 1/4" apart. Then pull all the bobbin threads together, gathering up the waistline to fit the bodice. This is slow-going, as you want the gathers to be even, and you have to be very careful not to break the threads as you pull. Once it's the correct size, I tied off all the bobbin threads in pairs.

If you want a similar effect but don't want to do the rows of gathering, you could use the All-Around Pleated Skirt pattern from my book and either make the pleats or just gather the waistline.

The back has a center lapped zipper. 

I took pictures outside near an old factory building, where there are also some cool murals. This one has sort of a pink Emerald City vibe to it. 

Idyllic mountainside!

Post Apocolypse! 

Accessories: pink Remix Rita shoes, polka dot hair scarf, and little pink earrings. And red nails, naturally.

Okay, back to the sewing machine!